US President Joe Biden flew into Rio de Janeiro on Air Force One. China’s President Xi Jinping made the trip to Brazil for this week’s G20 Leaders’ Summit on what the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs called a “special plane.” And Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum touched down for the summit at the airport in Rio on a commercial flight.
Among the G20 leaders who attended this week’s meeting in the Brazilian city, President Sheinbaum was apparently the only one who flew commercial to Rio – and in economy class, no less.
As Mexico News Daily reported on Monday, Sheinbaum flew from Mexico City to Rio via Panama City on Copa Airlines.
“We had a stopover in Panama, and after more than 11 hours of flying, we arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,” the president said on social media in a post that showed her reading while seated in the economy section of an aircraft.
The president’s office said in a statement that Sheinbaum, following in the footsteps of her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, chose to fly commercial “in line with one of the principles of her government: republican austerity.”
AMLO sold Mexico’s presidential jet used by his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, and mainly took commercial flights during his six-year term, although he also traveled on military aircraft on a number of occasions.
In addition to saving money, flying commercial allows the current president (and allowed the former one) to show Mexicans – or at least give them the impression – that she is “of the people” or “with the people” rather than above them.
Sheinbaum boarded another commercial flight to return to Mexico from Brazil on Tuesday.
Combating climate change was a focus at this year’s G20 Leaders’ Summit, but that didn’t mean that most leaders of the world’s largest economies attempted to limit emissions by flying commercial to Brazil.
As mentioned at the top of this article, United States President Joe Biden flew to Rio on Air Force One after making a stop in Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas.
The president of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, traveled to Brazil on board his country’s presidential plane after attending the APEC conference in Lima, Peru, while the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, made the trip on the Turkish presidential aircraft.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to Brazil on board a Royal Canadian Air Force plane along with other officials and his 15-year-old daughter.
Mexico News Daily could not find any media reports, government statements or other evidence that indicated that any of the G20 leaders – apart from Sheinbaum – flew on a commercial flight to Rio.
As part of austerity measures, Argentine President Javier Milei took commercial flights during the first months of his presidency, but the Argentine government announced in April he would no longer do so for security reasons.
Among G20 leaders, at least, Sheinbaum is flying solo on commercial airlines – that is if she can forget about the hundreds of other passengers packed into economy class, also known as “cattle class” in some parts of the world.
A high-flyer, some may say, but with her feet firmly on the ground, or stretched out beneath the plane seat in front of her.
Mexico News Daily
